Sex and the Stranger

by Justine Elyot

  Shelf Pleasure

  Justine Elyot

  By the time I’ve crossed the disabled parking bays I’m already nagged by a sense of disappointment, convinced that he isn’t here, that he’s changed his routine or left town or, worse, he’s avoiding me. But that’s a tad dramatic, not to mention self-centred, when I’ve no evidence that he’s even registered my existence.

  I take myself to task in the trolley park for building this minor twice-weekly frisson into, well, a thing. It’s a silly piece of self-indulgence to get me round the aisles in one piece. Magically, it deafens me to the shrieking demands of toddlers, the grumbling trolley-barging of pensioners, the general miasma of despair that hangs around the comestibles of my local BargainBuy. It isn’t a thing. It’s a nothing.

  The trolley doesn’t want to leave its rank and I rattle the handle a bit, yanking it back from the close embrace of the one behind with more force than should be necessary.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ I say under my breath, releasing it from its trap. Preparing to direct it towards the automatic doors, I look over my shoulder, suddenly worried that some arbiter of good shopping behaviour has witnessed my outburst. It’s worse than that though. He is standing behind me and I can’t avoid meeting his eyes during the re-orientation of my face.

  This has happened before, this meeting-of-eyes scenario. It goes like this: eyes meet, they drop immediately, heads turn away, then quickly turn back, eyes meet again for a fraction of a second before contact is terminated. This is the eighth time. Would a small smile of recognition be appropriate to celebrate the occasion? No, it wouldn’t. He just heard me swearing, for fuck’s sake. He’ll be disgusted and appalled by me.

  Also, he might have noted that I’m wearing lipstick and a skirt today and wonder why the hell I’ve dressed up to go to BargainBuy … but no. Of course he won’t have noticed that. Of course not, stupid.

  I wheel away at a brisker than brisk pace and take refuge in the fruit and veg. My tactics are the same as ever. I enter the shop ahead of him and time the negotiation of each aisle so that I can watch him advancing towards me, stopping to pick things up, frown at labels, drop things in the trolley, flick his eyes up to the end of the row where I am ‘absorbed’ in checking the sell-by date of whatever happens to be the last product on the shelf.

  How’s he getting his five a day today? Courgette, aubergine, honeydew melon, coriander, tomatoes. Moussaka? Ratatouille? Then he picks up strawberries and I frown, picturing him dipping them in cream and feeding them to a girlfriend.

  He looks up at me then, from about three feet away and holds the look.

  This is new.

  He’s warning me. Stop stalking me. I’ll call security.

  I grab my handle and flee to bread and bakery.

  ‘Hang on.’

  I look back. Is he talking to me? I think he is. I edge back towards him, liking the sound of his voice, which is exactly as I imagined it. The fact that I’ve imagined it suggesting that I open my legs and take it like the whore I am causes me to flush and swallow nervously, as if he can hear my fantasies.

  He’s holding out the punnet of strawberries.

  ‘Do these look ripe to you?’ he says.

  I look up at him. He looks … sane. Sexy as ever, with an earnestness in his eyes that could be real or a ploy. I peer into the box.

  ‘I suppose so. They aren’t green or anything.’

  ‘It's just that I can’t smell them. There’s usually a smell with strawberries, isn’t there? Kind of fruity and lush. Can you smell anything?’

  The way he said fruity and lush definitely sounded suggestive. Or is this just a wish-fulfilment dream?

  I bend and take a lungful of air.

  ‘There’s a hint of strawberry,’ I say. ‘But I don’t think they’re properly ripe, no.’

  ‘Hmm. Shame,’ he says. ‘I like them really, really ripe. Bursting with juice, y’know, so it runs down your chin and you have to lick it off.’

  There’s not much I can do in response to that but stare, through half-closed eyes, and try not to let my tongue hang out. He has the kind of low voice and drawly northern accent that can make anything sound filthy, but even so, that had to be a come-on … didn’t it?

  ‘I prefer cherries,’ I say, trying to prolong the conversation.

  ‘What kind of cherries?’ he asks with exaggerated interest. ‘The dark, intensely flavoured kind or those sticky bright red ones that look as if they’ve been smothered in lip gloss?’

  At the mention of lip gloss, he looks at my lips. I press them together and plump them up. I’m pretty sure I run my tongue along the lower one. He’ll be asking me my going rate in a moment.

  ‘Oh, all of them,’ I blether. ‘Any cherries. Especially on a cocktail stick.’

  He chuckles at that.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ he says. ‘Cocktails.’ (I’m not sure he emphasised the first syllable as much as I think he did.) ‘Cocktail cherries are my favourite.’ He looks down at the forgotten strawberries. ‘I’ll put these back then and maybe get some cherries instead.’

  Fear that I am making a fool of myself consumes me once more and I simply shrug and say, ‘If you want,’ and run off to the safety of the croissants.

  Surrounded by wholesome wholemeal, I try to review the situation. What was that all about? What did it mean? Was he flirting with me? Should I have flirted back a bit more?

  ‘Nice baps,’ says a familiar voice at my shoulder and a long hand reaches across my chest to pick up a four-pack of burger buns.

  It’s such a cliché of classic innuendo that I am left in no doubt. His intentions are impure. In my wicked delight I whip around and wag a finger at him, feeling like Barbara Windsor in a Carry On film. ‘Ooh, cheeky!’

  ‘I’ve been watching you for weeks,’ he says, still standing behind me, lowering his head for better access to my ear.

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘C’mon, you must have noticed. I was a bit worried you’d think I was stalking you.’

  ‘Oh!’ I twist my neck. My heart pounds. ‘So was I.’

  ‘Really?’

  I look down at his feet, which are big, and wonder for the millionth time whether that shoe-size-cock-size ratio thing is a myth.

  ‘Kind of,’ I mutter.

  ‘So you were checking me out while I was checking you out?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Don’t say ‘maybe’. Look at me.’

  When I do, his eyes almost glitter. He reminds me of a predator about to make his strike. My legs weaken and my clit pulses.

  I take a huge lungful of fresh-baked-bread smell and lean on the shelf for support.

  ‘I like the way your arse moves when you push a trolley,’ he says in a shade above a whisper while people mooch past, oblivious. ‘Especially today, in that tight skirt. When you bend down to pick up a can from the bottom shelf, it drives me wild.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ My answering whisper wavers. You could cut the sexual tension with a knife, or maybe feed it through the bread-slicer on the counter.

  ‘Oh yeah. Do it for me now. Bend over and pick up that bag of doughnuts down there.’

  ‘Doughnuts? Which ones? The ring ones?’

  ‘No, I prefer a hole to be filled. With something sweet and sticky.’

  ‘Jam, then?’

  He laughs. ‘Or toffee.’

  ‘Filthy pervert. Toffee has no place in a doughnut.’

  ‘Sounds like I need to teach you a thing or two … about doughnuts.’

  He hasn’t touched me yet, but I feel as if he’s all over me somehow and I’m hot and squirmy.

  ‘Okay.’ I swallow, turn and march towards the shelf in question. I look around to make sure no stray shoppers are watching, lean down extra low, giving my bum a full-bore wiggle. I think the hem might be showing a glimpse of stocking top and suppress a giggle, picturing the effect that sight might have on him.

  I pick up the doughnuts – jam – and turn to face him. He looks positivel
y ill with lust. I think that flash of stocking top must have happened.

  ‘I like this game,’ I tell him, handing over the artery-cloggers. ‘What’s my next challenge?’

  He opens the bag, takes out a doughnut and bites into it.

  ‘Hey, you can’t –’

  He points to the bar code label and shrugs.

  What he does next is infinitely more disturbing. He finds the jammy part and shoves it up to my mouth.

  ‘Lick it,’ he says. ‘Go on. Lap it up.’

  ‘I can’t!’

  ‘You can. I know you can.’

  He is wicked, and he makes me want to be wicked. Tentatively at first I extend my tongue and take the tiniest dot of the sweet red filling.

  ‘Mmm, is that nice?’ he purrs. ‘Get stuck in, go on.’

  I push my tongue into the hole and scoop out the jam until it is all gone and my face is sticky with sugar crystals.

  ‘Let me help you.’ He puts the half-eaten doughnut back in the bag. He hustles me into an alcove between the sliced white and the speciality loaves, takes my chin in his long fingers and, oh my God, what is this?

  He licks each grain of sugar off my skin with his warm wet tongue while I gasp and grab the pillar for support.

  ‘There,’ he says. ‘Your face tastes really nice. What are your lips like?’

  But I’m beyond speech. This seems to have gone wildly out of control very quickly. Should I be scared? My body seems to have replaced the fight-or-flight response with the fuck-or-fuck response.

  ‘Do you mind if I try them?’

  All I can do is shake my head.

  He presses his lips to mine and they feel every bit as good, as full, as hungry as I imagined they would. I’m getting snogged in a supermarket. The realisation floods my knickers. I grind myself against his crotch, finding bruising hardness there. His tongue unfurls inside my mouth and his hand reaches for my hip and slides around behind, covering my arse and taking a squeeze.

  The sound of ostentatious throat-clearing prevents us from going any further. A thunder-faced bakery assistant shoos us away.

  ‘Man cannot live on bread alone anyway,’ says my supermarket suitor airily. ‘I think you need meat.’

  I take my trolley and he stands behind me, his hands on mine, and pushes it along from my rear to the meat aisle. I wonder if the refrigerated air might dampen his ardour, but his erection crushes itself against my bottom with persistent force despite the chill.

  ‘You’re going to make some obvious joke about sausages, aren’t you?’ I say.

  ‘Me? I wouldn’t dream of making lewd pork product-based puns. I can’t think of anything wurst.’

  I kick his ankle. ‘Enough of that. What’s your name anyway?’

  ‘Serge.’

  ‘Serge? Are you French?’

  ‘No, my mum just had a thing about Serge Gainsbourg. How about you? Are you named after a parental heartthrob too? Brigitte? Agnetha? Princess Leia?’

  ‘Emma.’

  ‘Emma Peel? That figures.’

  ‘No, just Emma. Jeez. I’m glad we skipped the chatting up stage and just got on with business. You’re quite annoying, you know.’

  ‘I'm just nervous.’

  ‘Oh, come on.’

  ‘I am! Look at this hand – it’s shaking.’

  He waves his palm beneath my nose, demonstrating the fact.

  ‘Why are you nervous?’

  ‘Because I don’t know if I can make it out of this supermarket without ripping your clothes off and taking you on the fish counter.’

  ‘You’ll get arrested.’

  ‘I know. Hence the nerves.’ The trolley comes to a halt by the bacon. ‘I have to admit something too. But you’ll think I’m weird. I don’t think I can tell you.’

  ‘Oh, don’t tease. Confess all. I won’t judge, I promise.’

  ‘You will. You’ll judge me. OK then – but don’t laugh. I find supermarkets sexy.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘All the produce. All the ripeness and plenty, you know. Abundance and wealth. It’s kind of … arousing. I often think of doing it in a supermarket.’

  ‘That really is weird. Besides, you couldn’t do it in a supermarket. It’s just too busy.’

  ‘No it isn’t. Know how I know? Because I’ve done it.’

  ‘You haven’t!’

  ‘I used to work here, one hideous summer after A levels. I lost my virginity in here.’

  ‘Oh, you little liar!’

  ‘I’m not, I swear.’ He laughs. ‘In about ten minutes, they’ll change shifts. These guys will all go home and a new lot will come in. There’s a half-hour window after that before anyone takes a break … which means an empty staff room … which means …’

  ‘You aren’t serious? You’re serious!’

  He snakes a hand beneath my skirt, hiding my legs behind his.

  ‘Deadly serious. I want to feed you these cherries. Come on.’

  We abandon my trolley there amid the meat and Serge takes me in one hand and his basket in the other before heading purposefully towards the double doors at the back from which the trays of fresh produce emerge all day long.

  ‘We’ll be spotted,’ I moan.

  ‘No we won’t. I know this place like the back of my hand. Trust me.’ He grins down at me. ‘I’m a doctor.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You’ll get struck off.’

  ‘Don’t be silly’ We are through the double doors and he swerves to the right, leading us through the middle of some shelving instead of into the centre of the room, where shelf-stackers are sorting goods and loading up pallets. At the end of the row, another door leads into a corridor. We flit past the door marked STAFF ROOM and head into the room at the end, which turns out to be staff toilets.

  ‘We’ll wait here,’ he murmurs, hustling me into a stall in the Ladies’. ‘Ten minutes. I promise.’

  ‘You haven’t actually asked me if I want to have sex with you in the BargainBuy staff room,’ I point out.

  ‘Don’t you?’ He has his hand on the back of my neck, preparing to move in for the killer kiss, but he pauses for a moment, pouting at me. ‘You mean you’d leave me here with my lonely bachelor basket and go back to your trolley? What’s he got that I haven’t?’

  I aim a gentle kick to his shin, but I’m fooling nobody. I want him so badly he must be able to smell it on me.

  ‘A four-pack of plums.’

  ‘Ah, if it’s plums you want …’

  I give up. Doctor or not, nobody would be able to misdiagnose the shocking case of lust that has me in its grip.

  Our mouths come together again and we cling to each other like spider monkeys. I am crushed up against the partition, feeding on him, when the external door opens. I stiffen and try to push him off but he holds me very still, locking me into the kiss.

  ‘Yeah, can you believe she said that?’

  The sound of bags being unzipped, lipsticks uncapped, hairspray sprayed.

  Serge puts a hand on my hip and starts rucking my skirt up, slowly, gently.

  ‘Fucking bitch. As if she never slacks off. Did you see her yesterday, all over the bakery manager when she was supposed to be on the tills?’

  The skirt is high on my thigh, Serge’s fingers collecting the fabric until he holds a great fistful.

  ‘Ugh, he’s such a creep too. Silly cow. She thinks she’s above the rest of us. I want to slap her one.’

  Serge’s other hand creeps around to my bottom, rubbing it through the satiny fabric of my knickers.

  ‘Eh up.’ The woman’s voice hushes to a whisper. ‘That toilet’s engaged. Better watch what you say.’

  He moves lower, stroking the bare part of my thighs above the stocking tops, fingers fluttering lightly around to the sensitive inner skin. I quiver and try not to pant.

  ‘Hello,’ says the second voice stridently. ‘Who’s there?’

  I am caught in a bodily dilemma, on alert and yet
unable to resist Serge’s continuing campaign of seduction. The confusion bats me from one extreme to the other – tension, sex, fear, lust.

  Luckily the stalls aren’t the kind you can peer into.

  The women continue to make gruff overtures to us, while Serge plunges his hand inside my knickers and moves cunning fingertips over my fat wet clit.

  ‘I reckon someone’s shagging in there,’ says one of them suddenly. ‘Come on, let’s go out and see who’s missing. Hey, what if it’s Sheila?’

  They cackle hysterically and then the door bangs shut.

  Serge spears a couple of fingers inside me and pumps them back and forth with efficient rhythm. The kiss has wrecked our lips by now and he breaks it momentarily to whisper, ‘You’re a bad girl, aren’t you, getting fingered in a lavatory.’

  ‘You’re the bad one,’ I gasp. ‘What if they come back?’

  ‘They won’t. It’s home time. They’ve got bigger fish to fry. Give it five minutes and the staff room’ll be safe.’

  ‘Why the staff room? Why not here?’

  ‘I can’t get me cherries out in a public restroom. It’s not hygienic!’

  ‘Is what you’re doing now hygienic then? Oh God.’ His fingers speed up, pronging me with deadly accuracy while his palm slaps against my clit. I widen my stance, pushing down, urging him on until the sweet faraway tingle hits my groin and begins to spread and build, heading for the inevitable conclusion.

  ‘I’m going to come,’ I jerk out. ‘I’m going to come getting fingered by a strange man in a supermarket toilet, oh yes, yes.’

  I crumple against him. I’ve never felt so dirty, never felt so excited.

  ‘That’s a fair summing up of the situation,’ he says in a low, broken croon. He kisses my defeated lips. ‘And now you’re going to come getting fucked by a strange man in a supermarket staff room. Let’s do it.’

  I freeze at first, terrified of discovery, but Serge yanks me out and checks the coast is clear before rushing me into the empty staff room.